Letters to the Editor: Shalhevet, Tea Party Politics, Prager, Suissa

Mourning Loss of Jewish Day Schools

The pending closures of Shalhevet’s elementary and middle schools (“Shalhevet to Close 3 Schools Because of Financial Woes,” March 26) are tragedies. The schools are blessed with excellent faculties, and their corridors exude ruach at every turn. They’ve complemented well the outstanding array of Jewish day schools that dot the local landscape by providing unique alternatives for committed Jewish families. The shuttering of their doors will be a sad day for our community.

The reason behind this failure, financial hardship, surprises no one connected with Jewish education. Even in the best of times, Jewish schools struggle to remain fiscally sound. Today’s economy is destabilizing some of the heartiest among them. We must do more than just mourn this passing, as there’s much that can be done to bolster Southern California’s network of Jewish schools. The process should immediately begin by restoring our supplemental schools to the same high standards that they maintained just a few decades ago, because an education at these schools costs just a fraction of day school tuition. Classes should be conducted thrice weekly and students should participate in four to six weekend retreats annually for in-depth study and application of what they’ve been taught. There are numerous Jewish camps throughout the area that can accommodate such gatherings.

Leonard M. Solomon
Los Angeles

Not His Cup of Tea

I take a great deal of personal offense at your characterization of the Tea Party movement (“Party Off,” March 26). The overwhelming majority of people involved in the movement are not racist or any of the “phobes” you on the left love to call people with whom you disagree. I am a proud member of this movement, and I represent the true face of it — a hard-working, law-abiding, well-educated, patriotic American who is very worried about the direction in which the country is presently headed.

To use David Frum as an example of conservative thought is laughable. Out of all the prominent conservative thinkers in the country you could have cited, you quote one of the most erratic and confused men out there. And to equate the Tea Party movement with national socialism and communism, which, I might add, were left-wing movements, is one of the lowest forms of libel imaginable.

Maybe if you would come out of the cocoon of your West Coast elitism and mix with ordinary, mainstream middle America, you might come to realize that we are not the bigots and anti-Semites you think we are.

Sanford Kaplan
Los Angeles

The Right to Health Care

Dennis Prager warned those of us who support health care reform that we will be scorned by our descendants when they are faced with long waits for doctors and inferior medical care (“Jews and Big Government,” March 26). In other words, he feels we should prefer the shorter waits of today and the presumed superior care despite that they result from our fellow citizens being excluded from comparable services. His view of solely “what’s in it for me” contradicts fundamental Jewish teachings. Some 800 years ago, Maimonides listed health care first on his list of the 10 most important communal services that a city had to offer to its residents (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot De’ot IV: 23). Almost all self-governing Jewish communities throughout history set up systems to ensure that all their citizens had reasonable access to health care. I would suggest that when he writes in a Jewish publication to a Jewish audience, Mr. Prager should respect the teachings and values of our faith. He should also consider that our descendants will actually thank those of us who supported health care reform — for being able to pursue careers without having to worry about pre-existing conditions, for being able to work part time or self-employed and still have medical insurance within reach, and even for the shorter lines in the emergency rooms … which will result from more people being able to see doctors on a regular basis for preventive and curative care.

John F. Beckmann
Sherman Oaks

Editor’s note: Please see Dennis Prager’s column on Page 9 for his response.

Government by the People, for the People

Thank you, David Suissa (“Let My People Stay,” March 26)! Why not take it to the people? In the United States, we are so quick to voice our opinions as to how everyone else in the world should conduct business. We always seem to fail to consider the people who are involved — Israelis and Palestinians. Let the people who live there decide how the two-state solution will allow for coexistence for Muslims, Jews, Christians, Greek Orthodox and other religions in the area known as Israel/Palestine. Establish town-hall meetings to identify the issues as seen by the people living in Israel/Palestine. Then have the people prioritize those issues to identify the ones most important to them. Compare those prioritized lists. Submit the lists to a committee consisting of representatives of the people to develop the agenda for the peace process. Let the people decide where and how they want to live in peace. Let the people decide who wants to live in the Palestinian state and who wants to live in the Israeli state. Let them decide on the governmental format of each state.

For thousands of years, Arabs and Jews peacefully coexisted in the Israel/Palestine area. Why not now?

Sandra K. Brodwin
La Canada Flintridge

Correction

In “UCLA Med Sciences Leader Steps Down” (March 19), David Geffen’s endowment to UCLA’s School of Medicine was $200 million.

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